Orange County Register

 11 Comments

• Bim Bim says:

  November 21, 2009 at 5:32 pm

  I’m pretty sure Keith Law has forgotten more about baseball than you will ever know.

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• GregE says:

  November 21, 2009 at 5:54 pm

  You seriously think if Keith Law and Will Carroll were to vote on the 1968 season that they would ignore the value of all of the extra innings pitched? You don’t need to look at wins to see the value in what McClean did. Also looking at the WHIP is stupid because it isn’t like Law and Carroll didn’t vote for Wainwright solely on WHIP. Tim Lincecum was fourth in WHIP in the NL and they voted him 1st. You have basically shown yourself completely incapable of proving a coherent point.

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• Nigel Mellish says:

  November 21, 2009 at 6:03 pm

  “Beyond the fact that Law and Carroll aren’t daily on-site baseball writers, the disregard for a pitcher’s win total ”

  That would almost be about as bad as some hack who wrote distastefully about a kidnap victim. And,like the fact that Law and Carroll aren’t on-site baseball writers, about as relevant as the color of Obama’s Pajamas to who should be Cy Young.

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  • Chris Miller says:

    November 21, 2009 at 6:26 pm

    Law worked in a front Office for crying out loud. The writers thinking they are more qualified than real analysts is hilarious, the more I read the more the cases against the writers grows. I wish the MLB would take over the awards and give the votes to real analysts. The current setup makes them irrelevant. Too bad.

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• Chris Miller says:

  November 21, 2009 at 6:24 pm

  They should just rename the Cy Young the Most Wins awards, because it’s not the award for the best pitcher, at least based on what some of the writers are saying. It’s the award for the best and luckiest pitcher on the best team, since that matters as much as actual talent in getting wins. If anything it shows why the awards are meaningless. Just because someone follows a team and writes, doesn’t make them good analysts. Most writers are not just bad analyst, but outright terrible, relying on cliche and hunches instead of real analytical skill. I love how everyone things this is stat guys versus us, no it’s modern baseball analyses, which uses much better statistics than Wins, but in ways sports writers think they are qualified to comment on, but laughably are not. That and real analysts don’t just use some single random number to evaluate a player.

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• Whicker is not Smart says:

  November 21, 2009 at 8:22 pm

  Whicker is not smart. While this statement seems self-evident, the fact that he remains employed is evidence to the contrary. So I say it again: Whicker is not smart.

  Go somewhere and eat a monkey, Mark Whicker.

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• Lance says:

  November 21, 2009 at 9:49 pm

  I can either go with someone who has worked for a front office, consistently backs up everything he says with cold logic and facts, and is generally a very intelligent person, or I can go with some “writer” who decided to make light of a kidnapping and decades of life stolen from a girl. Tough choice.

  (Of course I don’t mean to seem like I go with Law just because I know he’s a good guy.)

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• guess says:

  November 21, 2009 at 10:18 pm

  See if you can follow this, Mark.

  Baseball is a TEAM sport. Baseball TEAMS win and lose ballgames.

  INDIVIDUALS do not win and lose ballgames. Not even if they’re the pitcher.

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• oy says:

  November 22, 2009 at 5:55 am

  If you don’t know anything about baseball, why do you write about it?

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• Steve Marchand says:

  November 22, 2009 at 5:56 am

  To Mark Whicker:

  I have two points. The less important one: Law and Carroll are two of the best-informed writers on baseball in the business, and appear far more thoughtful about their decision-making process than you. They didn’t support a guy with 12 wins over a 25 game winner or something. In this era, most starters don’t finish their starts, which means an ever-increasing peercentage of decisions go to relief pitchers, not the starters. Because few relievers consider their win total much of a barometer of their effectiveness, and because more and more well-pitched starts lead to no-decisions today than at any point in baseball history, wins are far from the most important indicator of a starter’s effectiveness. It is a factor - if one starter wins 10 gamems more than another starter, it likely suggests other advantages that pitcher has, like more innings pitched, effectiveness and efficiency in the way they pitch, etc. - but win total is not the primary factor for comparing starters.

  Point number two, w hich is far more important: Your column a few months ago about what the rape victim has missed in the sports world in the last 18 years is one of the most offensive, crude pieces I’ve ever seen in print. Your judgement is shockingly poor, and you should be fired. Are you married? Do you have sisters or daughters? How could you possibly think that this column - intended to be humorous, I presume - was remotely appropriate for such a horrific crime?

  Despicable.

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• Greg Andrew says:

  November 24, 2009 at 6:36 am

  McLain had legitimate competition for the 1968 AL Cy in 1968 in McNally and Tiant. His incredible record was more the result of his receiving run support 46% above that of the average AL pitcher, one of the highest seasonal run support figures of all time. (You give any major league starter who can stay in the rotation for 33 games these days that much support, and they’ll probably be credited with as many as 25 wins) Comparatively, McNally had run support of about 10% above average and Tiant 6% below average.

  However, in that case, McLain was the correct Cy Young winner, because he pitched 60 more innings than either Tiant or McNally. Pitching value is based on how well a pitcher pitches and how much he pitches.

  In this year’s race, comparatively, there was nobody who pitched substantially more innings than Lincecum or Greinke.

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